"World Community Grid's mission is to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity."World Community Grid is making technology available only to public and not-for-profit organizations to use in humanitarian research that might otherwise not be completed due to the high cost of the computer infrastructure required in the absence of a public grid. As part of our commitment to advancing human welfare, all results will be in the public domain and made public to the global research community."http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org

My crunching came to a rapid (and hopefully temporary) halt. My PC was running on the hot side, and I took it outside and cleaned out the heat sinks and rest of it as I usually do, but that didn't help. I thought maybe I didn't get everything, so I cranked up the air pressure on my air compressor and tried again. I was taught to hold the fans to keep them from spinning rapidly -- I touched the cowl holding the fan, and all of a sudden, the whole cowl seemed to move a little bit. I thought that the thermal paste had failed -- I took the PC down to the shop, and the guy looked at it, and said that actually the machine screws holding the heat-sink base had broken, and he ordered a new base and heat sink for it. Today he called, and said that he got the part in, but they failed to send the entire assembly, and they are express shipping the rest of it it. I asked him if that was unusual for the screws to fail, but he says he had seen this many times on that CPU (an I7). He said they redesigned the base. I wish I knew more about hardware replacement. I am using my laptop for posting this -- have been thinking about crunching on it, but afraid of temperature and other issues. Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. BTW 3 of my friends have came down with bad cancer -- one, who was a wife of a friend of mine died -- she had breast cancer, and it came back, and got in her brain and her lymph nodes. My second friend had advanced cancer around his spinal chord and was prepared to die. He told them to stop chemo -- he couldn't stand it any more, but to the doctors' surprise, he has been in remission (2 months now). My third friend was sent home from hospice to die -- he has a grapefruit sized (stage 4) tumor in his chest, and the cancer has spread to his brain and lymph nodes.

I'm sorry to hear about your friends, littlepeaks. That's sad but it's why a lot of us crunch.I would definitely NOT crunch on your laptop. I crunched on my old gaming laptop and burned out the heatsink (fried the fan) and had to take it completely apart. I gave it to my wife to use for genealogy. Works great for that. Hopefully, you'll get your computer back soon. I still have the i7 I built in 2009 with some upgrades (more RAM, SSD, upgraded video card), but my office gets too hot for me to crunch on it nowadays. Last winter, I had to keep my office window open... .

You guys are in a perfect WU crunching climate in Colorado Springs. It seems to me you could crunch with anything. I was able to visit Colorado Springs last April for business, and I had a good time. I hiked around Pulpit Rock twice, but I wasn't able to figure out how to get to the top.

I got my PC back from the shop -- the new heat sink and fan is a shiny silver color, and it blows sideways from the mother board, as opposed to directly up from the mother board, as the stock cooler did. My PC runs a lot cooler and a lot quieter. Also had them double the RAM to 12 GB. This is an older PC (2011 - 2012?), but it's kind of on the beefy side. So I'm back to crunching -- doing 3 WUs at a time -- not sure if I want to increase it to 4 or not just yet. One of my friends with cancer passed away last night I've been visiting him every week -- he liked visitors. Another friend of mine and I went out to pray for him last week. He lives out east in Ellicott. The common thread with two of these people is that they are heavy smokers.

Peacemaker -- I like hiking from time to time. I like hiking up the Manitou Incline. Also, a month or so ago, I hiked up part way to Cheyenne Mountain. I got part way up the Dixon Trail, but didn't have enough time to make it to the top and back. And I was having foot problems and didn't want to push it -- only did about 9 miles round trip. Ended up buying custom inserts that my podiatrist recommended for me. The Dixon Trail is in Cheyenne Mountain State Park - a Colorado State park, just across from Ft. Carson. The trails were really well done and well marked, but the scenery wasn't that good, unless you like looking at the back half of Ft. Carson, including Butts Army Air Field.

Sorry to hear about your friends. Way too many people coming down with all forms of cancer.

I second USAFA82 view. Don't use a laptop for crunching. I did it and it worked fine for a year or so than it wouldn't do it anymore. Would over heat and crash. Even after I torn it apart and replaced the cooling components.

I rebooted one of my machines and it said it only had 1/4 of the memory so I rebooted it again and it won't come back on. Won't even post now. Its had a good 4 year run but I was hoping to get it through the winter since it heats the garage up! LOL